Lorna Goodison

With this highly praised collection of short fiction, Lorna Goodison demonstrates why she may be one of literature's best-kept secrets. In the Pushcart Prize-winning title story, humble Dottie thinks her luck has turned when she meets Frenchie, the best-looking, if not most reliable, man in the whole of Jamaica. In "The Helpweight," an accomplished woman must bear the burden of an old flame's renewed affections when he returns from a life abroad with his Irish bride in tow. And in "Henry," a young boy turned out of his house to make way for his mother's lover sells roses on the street to survive. On a whim, he bites off a bloom, which he can feel burning inside his mouth like a red pepper light, hoping it will take root and beautify his own life. Poetically rendered, these and over a dozen other evocative stories create a world in which pride can nourish a soul or be its ruin and where people are in turn uplifted and undone by love.

Stories

By Love Possessed

Mother Muse

This stunning new book of poems from internationally renowned poet Lorna Goodison opens in Spain and Portugal, conjuring up a new history of the Caribbean and a new way of setting up its heritage. The title sets the tone for poems about backgrounds and outlines and shadows and sources of light. This extraordinary book -- "a wide lotus on the dark waters of song" -- is filled with surprises at every turn, as a Moorish mosque becomes a cathedral in Seville, a country girl dresses in Sunday clothes to visit a Jamaican bookmobile, and a bear appears suddenly, only to slip away silently into the trees on a road in British Columbia. The heartache of Billy Holliday singing the blues, the burden of Charlie Chaplin tramping the banana walks of Jamaica's Golden Cloud, and the paintings of El Greco, the quintessential stranger, come together on the poet's pilgrimage to Heartease, guided by a limping angel and inspired by the passage-making of Dante; the book ends with a superb version of the first of his cantos, translated into the poet's Jamaican language and landscape with the gift of love.

Supplying Salt and Light

A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island

From Harvey River

"Throughout her life my mother [Doris] lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up." In the tradition of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and Carlos Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana comes Lorna Goodison's luminous memoir of her forebears—From Harvey River. When Doris' English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family's home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the "fabulous Harvey girls" and where the rich local bounty of the land went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents' house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to "hard life" Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters as they raise their family of nine children. In lush prose, Lorna Goodison weaves memory and island lore to create a vivid, universally appealing tapestry.

In her first-ever collection of essays, poet and novelist Lorna Goodison interweaves the personal and political to explore themes that have occupied her working life: her love of poetry and the arts, colonialism and its legacy, racism and social justice, authenticity, and the enduring power of friendship. Taking her title from one of Kingston’s oldest markets, a historic meeting place that was almost destroyed by fire, she introduces us to a vivid cast of characters and remembers moments of epiphany—in a cinema in Jamaica, at New York’s Bottom Line club, and as she searched for a black hairdresser in Paris and drank tea in London’s Marylebone High Street. Enlightening and entertaining, these essays explore not only daily challenges but also the compassion that enables us to rise above them. Goodison’s poet’s eye, profound vision and glorious combination of metaphysical and post-colonial sensibilities confirm her as a major figure in world literature.

Essays and Adventures

Redemption Ground

I Am Becoming My Mother

Maya Angelou

Olive Senior

Offers challenging and original perspectives on relationships, societies and cultures. These are stories of people, especially black women, making their voices heard as they endure, survive, create and laugh together. Stories include: Incident in the Yard, Names and Visit to the Dentist by Maya Angelou; Nineteen Fifty-Five, The Flowers and to Hell with Dying by Alice Walker; Love Orange, Do Angels Wear Brassieres? And the Boy Who Loved Ice Cream by Olive Senior; The Dolly Funeral, I Come Through, I Don't Want to Go Home in the Dark, The King of Swords and Bella Makes a Life by Lorna Goodison.

Quartet of Stories

“Throughout her life my mother, Doris, lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up.” When Doris Harvey’s English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family’s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the “fabulous Harvey girls,” and where the rich local bounty of Lucea yams, pimentos, and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties of her parents’ house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to “hard life” Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters. In Lorna Goodison’s spellbinding memoir of her forebears, we meet a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, including George O’Brian Wilson, the Irish patriarch of the family who married a Guinea woman after coming to Jamaica in the mid-1800s; Doris’s parents, Margaret and David, childhood sweethearts who became the first family of Harvey River; and their eight children, Cleodine, straight-backed and imperious; serious Albertha, called “Miss Jo” because she was missing all sense of joviality; beautiful Howard, who dies an early death; Rose, whose loveliness inspires devotion but whose own heart is never fulfilled; taxi-man Edmund, who yearns for the freedoms of the big city; Flavius, who spends his life searching for the true church of God; large-hearted, practical-minded Doris, whose bottomless cooking pot often feeds more than just her family; and vivacious, hard-headed Ann, whose gift of reading hair tells her the future. In lush, vivid prose, textured with the cadences of Creole speech, Lorna Goodison weaves together memory and mythology to create a vivid tapestry. She takes us deep into the heart of a complete world to tell a universal story of family and the ties that bind us to the place we call home.

This stunning new book of poems from internationally renowned poet Lorna Goodison opens in Spain and Portugal, conjuring up a new history of the Caribbean and a new way of setting up its heritage. The title sets the tone for poems about backgrounds and outlines and shadows and sources of light. This extraordinary book—"a wide lotus on the dark waters of song"—is filled with surprises at every turn, as a Moorish mosque becomes a cathedral in Seville, a country girl dresses in Sunday clothes to visit a Jamaican bookmobile, and a bear appears suddenly, only to slip away silently into the trees on a road in British Columbia. The heartache of Billy Holliday singing the blues, the burden of Charlie Chaplin tramping the banana walks of Jamaica's Golden Cloud, and the paintings of El Greco, the quintessential stranger, come together on the poet's pilgrimage to Heartease, guided by a limping angel and inspired by the passage-making of Dante; the book ends with a superb version of the first of his cantos, translated into the poet's Jamaican language and landscape with the gift of love.

Poems

Short Stories

Fool-fool Rose is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah

Lorna Goodison's family made their home in the Jamaican village to which her great-grandfather gave his name: Harvey River. Her mother Doris was a big-hearted lover of big stories and raised Lorna on tales of their family's - and Jamaica's - history. Gorgeously written with unashamed joy, From Harvey River weaves together memories with island folklore to create a vivid and irresistible story of mothers and daughters, family, and the ties that bind us to home.

A Memoir Of My Mother And Her Island

Various

Jamaica Kincaid

Eric Walrond

Sam Selvon

Jean Rhys

Kamau Brathwaite

Austin Clarke

Paule Marshall

James Berry

Wayne Brown

Lawrence Scott

Andrew Salkey

Erna Brodber

Earl Lovelace

Makeda Silvera

Neil Bissoondath

Roger Mais

Wilson Harris

Hazel D. Campbell

Willi Chen

Pauline Melville

Louise Bennett

Wilfred Wood

Kenneth Vidia Parmasad

Seepersad Naipaul

Claude MacKay

Frank Collymore

C... L. R. James

Garth St Omer

Vidiadhar Surajprashad Naipaul

N... D. Williams

Clyde Hosein

Alecia MacKenzie

Spanning the history of Caribbean writing, this meticulously compiled collection of 40 short stories includes pre-Columbian legends and myths from India and Africa, and many stories that are an evocative reminder of the turbulent history of the region. Authors featured include Andrew Salkey, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, and Lawrence Scott, among others. A major anthology reflecting the diversity and richness of Caribbean writing.

The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories

Baby Mother and the King of Swords

At the heart of acclaimed poet Lorna Goodison’s seventh book of poetry – her first published in Canada – is music, moving from a slow ska, a hard rocksteady, and a sweetie-come-brush-me bossanova, to line and sight gratitude psalms, lionheart outlaw anthems, and Miles Davis, blown by the winds to a concert in Berlin. Many of the poems are about those not heard or less counted, those who live in places like the favelas of Rio or the Kingston slum called Moonlight City. Goodison chronicles how “from shameports we passed through whale-belly nights of no return”, or from prison through the fields of Tecumseh on a Greyhound bus to Detroit. And she journeys, as they must have, to hell, this time in a marvellous translation of the canto about Brunetto Latini from Dante’s Inferno, where she meets Mr. Brown, a Jamaican duppy conqueror from her own land of look behind. Set mainly in her native Jamaica but universal in its concerns, this book, rare and special, is the real thing.

Travelling Mercies

A collection of poems focusing on the culture and people of the Caribbean

To Us, All Flowers are Roses

Lorna Goodison is a poet alive to places, from the loved and lived-in world of Jamaica where she began and started a family, to the United States and Canada where she has made her teaching career, but always re-connecting with her Caribbean roots. She travels with an ear alert to histories and voices. How differently English sounds in the tropi and in colder lands, at seaside in sunlight and on prairies, mountains and in cities. The same words say quite different things, depending on who speaks them and who’s listening, obeying or resisting. She covers a wide range of subjects and themes, too. Her instinct is to celebrate being alive in a world that is rich but in peril. ‘And what is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore?’ asks Derek Walcott. ‘Joy.’ The ‘mango of poetry’, eaten straight from the tree, Goodison somehow finds growing in Wordsworth country and in Sligo, in Russia and Norway, in Spain and Portugal which spilled their empires into the Caribbean, in Hungary and Far Rockaway. // ‘The publication of Lorna Goodison’s Collected Poems – with their extraordinary music, sensuous texture, and powerful historical imagination – is a major event. These are poems stunningly alive to the nuances of language, beautifully pitched and tuned, rich with feeling and insight.’ Jahan Ramazani // ‘Lorna Goodison brings herself into the presence of every poem, and so into the presence of her readers. Like the ideal teacher, she enables us to hear history sing its joy and shout its rage in her own personal tones of voice, and to feel the folds and textures of her various homelands like a display of rich cloths. She excels in both the emblematic and descriptive powers of popular poetry, and introduces us to an array of characters sharply but generously perceived, and often as deliciously audible after death as in life. This is an inspiring collection for a time when hopes for transnational unity are profoundly challenged. Goodison’s poems frequently acknowledge the complex unhealed scars of imperial greed and violence, but the impulse is towards hope, and our imaginations are enchanted by a potential global spring of warmth, nourishment, camaraderie and sheer fun. In the poet’s own words of gratitude to “Miss Mirry African bush healing woman”, we should “turn thanks now” to Lorna Goodison for addressing us across so many years on her unique world-service of human truth – and stay tuned.’ Carol Rumens

Collected Poems

The Jamaican poet presents a collection of verse acknowledging her own ancestors and that of her craft.

Turn Thanks

Lorna Goodison

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